Sysco opens Long Island office, warehouse

Sysco Long Island President Frank Recine, left, and Islip Supervisor Tom Croci in the new Sysco distribution center

Sysco Long Island officially opened the doors to its new 420,000-square-foot, state of the art distribution center this morning.

The $92 million facility in Central Islip took 14 months to complete, replacing a much smaller distribution center, previously operated by C&S Wholesale Grocers. Aurora Contractors of Ronkonkoma built the new facility.

The Town of Islip Industrial Development Agency provided $7.3 million in financial assistance to Sysco in choosing Central Islip to set up shop. When the IDA deal was made last March, Sysco Long Island promised to create 180 jobs by the time it opened. Instead, the company has already hired 235 – the majority of which are from Long Island – and plans to hire more as needed.

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Jobs created include executives, sales, customer service and administrative staff, credit analysts, buyers, chefs, drivers, mechanics and warehouse workers. Many employees were hired through a cooperative effort with the Central Islip Civic Council.

“We were very impressed with the talent we found here,” Sysco Long Island CFO Karen Casey said.

The distribution facility includes several temperature controlled zones, including a receiving center kept at 33 degrees, an 88,000-square-foot zero-degree cold storage warehouse and a 20,000-square-foot ice cream freezer kept at a bone-chilling 20-below zero. More than 10,000 separate and specialty items are housed within the facility. Other amenities include a kitchen for chef demonstrations, formal dining room with monitors to watch chefs prepare food and a 250-person capacity multipurpose room the company plans to use for conferences and seminars for many of its food service clients. A 24-hour fitness center was also built for employees.

“Islip has long been waiting for this,” Islip Supervisor Tom Croci said. “Long Islanders want two things right now more than anything else: jobs and food. This provides both.”

Sysco Long Island will serve as a separate entity from its parent company, Houston-based Sysco Corp. – the nation’s largest food service company. The company distributes products to nearly 400,000 restaurants and institutions. It has local offices in Jersey City, upstate New York and Rocky Hill, Conn., that were handling distribution efforts prior to the opening of the new Central Islip center.

The facility, which will distribute exclusively to restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels and other food agencies in Suffolk, Nassau, Queens and Kings counties, is still stocking up and training its new staff, and will begin full shipping operations by July 30, Casey said.

Sysco officials were originally going to build a 375,000 square foot facility in Yaphank, but changed direction in 2009, opting for the 46 acres next to the Central Islip train station. The property was purchased for $30 million.